It sounds like a movie I'd want to like, but it won't be as good as it should be. Freddie, you don't really say if it's any good? Also, note to self: Avoid Letterboxd.
Interesting parallel to Three Billboards… from 2017.
People thought they were getting a polemic about righteous women and shitty cops. Then the movie ended up being far more nuanced than that, and more interesting too. But it made people deeply uncomfortable because nuance doesn’t track with ideological ranting. So a section of the left wing media absolutely hated 3BB and couldn’t really explain why. It was frustrating and funny all at the same time
This year's Eddington faced similar disdain by lacking clear tracking to easy ideological priors. A single brief shot (soon after the midpoint of film) was a genius scene that caused minds across the spectrum to explode. Black hooded baddies on a jet to Eddington: was that far-right or far-left chum? Both? Neither? Hilarious stuff that left nobody happy, expect for film buffs that appreciate cleverly provocative imagery.
Funny thing about Three Billboards is that reviews were initially very strong across the board. Then the Twitterati got to it and suddenly it was Evil. That led to some very funny stuff like people sweatily walking back their positive reviews: "I'm so sorry I Did A Problematic!"
I just read the initial review by A.A. Dowd, and it is predictably brilliant, in part because he is so obviously impressed with the contradictions, hypocrisies, and nuances that occur when you make a movie about flawed human beings. It's a damn shame what the A.V. Club has become. I remember when Dowd and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky were not-technically-fired-but-come-on-they-were-fired. It still bums me out.
Yeah I was a more-or-less lifelong AVC follower but I finally jumped ship after A- A- Dowd and IV were forced out. I read a review written by one of the new writers and it was so poorly written I could barely get through it. I never go there anymore and indeed, it bums me out too
Im very excited to see this film now. The common, petty ways in which humans fall short of our ideals is a much richer lode of comedy than whatever the issue of the moment is.
"Letterboxd is, as I’ve said before, an artifact of everything annoying about the internet: it’s a forum where a lot of sharp people say interesting things about movies, interesting things which are immediately drowned out by the torrents of one-liners from adult children who are desperate for attention and seem to believe that if they ever stop performing for their peers, they will cease to exist".
Indeed. I keep my reviews to Mubi, which (for its flaws) tends to have users posting interesting little reviews rarther than terminally online snark.
Mubi? Does that include reviews of newly released films, or only those on its platform?
Strangely, the only place I find intelligent user reviews and discussion of newly released films is on Reddit (in the years since the demise of AV Club as a useful forum).
I'd never heard of Letterboxed until this posting. Sounds like the movie version of Goodreads, a panopticon filled with prissy, bullying guards who brigade anyone foolish enough to have an alternative point of view.
Freddie asks us to "please like my own objectively correct Letterboxd review in order to push it up the leaderboard and serve as a protest against all the dumb ones." Wow. This is a surprising moral dilemma. I am inclined to go out of my way to support the objectively correct words of a guy I like. But that requires me to open an account on a platform I have carefully (and wisely) avoided for years. Once I do that, how do I justify my failure to open a Bluesky account to fight the good fight there? Sorry, but I think sitting it out it is the least bad choice in. Anything else would feel like adding performative fuel to a meaningless fire in a little world that will safely burn out of its own accord without my attention.
"In fact, the movie’s true ambition is far darker and more satirical: it’s a biting gonzo comedy of manners about how those who claim to live in the realm of ideas betray those ideas when they matter most. Everyone wants it to say something, but its entire point is that, in this milieu, nothing really stands for much")."
It's just witch hunts, all the way down (and yes, that goes for #MeToo as well as the backlash), humans using moral preening and victim status to get ahead.
> "If you are starting to believe that the vast bulk of humanity is a worthless morass of lying, defecating chimpanzees, then I've done my job." -- Citizen Ted
Given that Freddie has seen a lot of the ugly side of life, I'm kind of surprised that he's surprised when people don't act in accordance with their proclaimed high moral principles.
I was thinking about that film while I was reading the essay. Mamet’s deeply uncomfortable film raises an important issue. William H. Macy’s character doesn’t actually cross a sexual line with Rebecca Pigeon, in my opinion, but he is a horrible jerk to her and fails to fulfill his duty as her professor. The only way she can punish him is to invoke sexual harassment.
I think that the same issue applies in some “Me Too” cases. (Note: some cases! Many, many “Me Too” accusations were over real harassment and worse!) Sometimes, a man isn’t sexually harassing a woman he has power over, but he is treating her badly for other reasons. But when “Me Too” is the easiest (or the only) way to punish the behavior, it is tempting to invoke it.
I think we need a new category for bad, abusive behavior that isn’t sexual to account for professors like Macy’s character.
Thank you, interesting reply! I'm a huge Mamet fan, his The Winslow Boy and State & Main are absolutely 2 of my all time favorites.
People behaving badly, particularly those in a position of power or authority, is the human condition; I'm not convinced that there should be any special carve-outs for punishing perpetrators or lionizing victims. I think authors and playwrights and filmmakers actually offer us the best path forward to examine and reconsider our own behaviors and expectations.
Boycotting anything and everything with any woke, #MeToo, leftist, feminist propaganda.
#MeToo promotes the wrong end of feminism and continues to drive a wedge into male-female gender relations. It was never about equality, it was a tool of the vulnerable narcissist female that was always angry at the specific dicks she craved but could not attract.
You're a partisan culture warrior, and you're boring as shit. *That* was your comment in response to FdB's piece? Get offline for a few years, man. You're like an AI trained on the most boring social media posts ever.
LOL. My brain is more than fine. Your problem is that you have no valid point of reference. You need to get out of your brainwashing bubble a bit sweetheart. It is not that K. Richardo is ignorant, it is that he knows so much that just isn't so. Cults will do that to a person.
Coming at the cold, you sound exactly like a tedious left wing culture warrior who has one answer for everything, no matter the question, just from the other side.
Crazy that Andrew Garfield is old enough to play a college professor and not a college student. I guess The Social Network is somehow fifteen years old.
This is a great review but reminds me of Vissini’s riff on the poisoned cup with the Man in Black in the Princess Bride: “All I have to do is divine from what I know of you (and this movie)….”
Maybe if more people read Sontag’s Against Interpretation, more people would shut up about what things mean and instead appreciate things for what they are.
"Metalheads and bikers are nice people cosplaying as mean people, while hippies and progressives are mean people cosplaying as nice people."
My family is from the Midwest where I spent my younger child years. I have lived in California since 1974. I first lived in a central valley agricultural community. Since 1978, after I graduated high school, I moved to a liberal college town where I still live. I have been involved with city politics in this liberal community. So, I have quite experience associating with people from both political tribes.
The analogy goes like this. In the Midwest town where my family is from, the new progressive blue haired and tatted lesbian couple that moves in will hear from the working-class couple next door that they don't like their lesbian lifestyle, their hair color, their tattoos and their politics. But when one of them is sick, the husband neighbor will mow their grass and clear the snow from the walkway and driveway, and the wife will bring them soup and ask if there is anything she can do to help them in their time of need. In my liberal community the progressive neighbor next door to the Trump supporter with his F150 parked in his driveway chats about the weather, asks how the kids are doing... and then goes inside to tell her husband "I hope he and his wife dies of cancer or a car accident, and his kids become orphans." And her low-T progressive whimp of a husband nods his head in agreement.
> "The old saw that liberals love humanity but hate humans while conservatives hate humanity but love humans is proven accurate over and over, each time I am in the one or the other's company." -- "Chateau"
Sold! I really want to see this movie now. I had ignored it at first due to the mediocre reviews, but you make a compelling point.
It sounds like a movie I'd want to like, but it won't be as good as it should be. Freddie, you don't really say if it's any good? Also, note to self: Avoid Letterboxd.
Interesting parallel to Three Billboards… from 2017.
People thought they were getting a polemic about righteous women and shitty cops. Then the movie ended up being far more nuanced than that, and more interesting too. But it made people deeply uncomfortable because nuance doesn’t track with ideological ranting. So a section of the left wing media absolutely hated 3BB and couldn’t really explain why. It was frustrating and funny all at the same time
FIT INTO THE BOX I WANT YOU TO FIT INTO, MOVIE!
This year's Eddington faced similar disdain by lacking clear tracking to easy ideological priors. A single brief shot (soon after the midpoint of film) was a genius scene that caused minds across the spectrum to explode. Black hooded baddies on a jet to Eddington: was that far-right or far-left chum? Both? Neither? Hilarious stuff that left nobody happy, expect for film buffs that appreciate cleverly provocative imagery.
Funny thing about Three Billboards is that reviews were initially very strong across the board. Then the Twitterati got to it and suddenly it was Evil. That led to some very funny stuff like people sweatily walking back their positive reviews: "I'm so sorry I Did A Problematic!"
Yes! I remember the AV Club gave it an A- but then did a re-evaluation later to address their sins
I just read the initial review by A.A. Dowd, and it is predictably brilliant, in part because he is so obviously impressed with the contradictions, hypocrisies, and nuances that occur when you make a movie about flawed human beings. It's a damn shame what the A.V. Club has become. I remember when Dowd and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky were not-technically-fired-but-come-on-they-were-fired. It still bums me out.
Yeah I was a more-or-less lifelong AVC follower but I finally jumped ship after A- A- Dowd and IV were forced out. I read a review written by one of the new writers and it was so poorly written I could barely get through it. I never go there anymore and indeed, it bums me out too
My experience exactly, down to every last detail :(
Note to self: find this film.
Im very excited to see this film now. The common, petty ways in which humans fall short of our ideals is a much richer lode of comedy than whatever the issue of the moment is.
What an excellent review. Almost every line is quotable.
"Letterboxd is, as I’ve said before, an artifact of everything annoying about the internet: it’s a forum where a lot of sharp people say interesting things about movies, interesting things which are immediately drowned out by the torrents of one-liners from adult children who are desperate for attention and seem to believe that if they ever stop performing for their peers, they will cease to exist".
Indeed. I keep my reviews to Mubi, which (for its flaws) tends to have users posting interesting little reviews rarther than terminally online snark.
Mubi? Does that include reviews of newly released films, or only those on its platform?
Strangely, the only place I find intelligent user reviews and discussion of newly released films is on Reddit (in the years since the demise of AV Club as a useful forum).
You can review any film in the database (and if it's not on the database, add it).
I'd never heard of Letterboxed until this posting. Sounds like the movie version of Goodreads, a panopticon filled with prissy, bullying guards who brigade anyone foolish enough to have an alternative point of view.
Also, as I noted in a reply to Freddie's note, at this point it's bold of you guys to assume the dumb reviews are actually written by people.
Freddie asks us to "please like my own objectively correct Letterboxd review in order to push it up the leaderboard and serve as a protest against all the dumb ones." Wow. This is a surprising moral dilemma. I am inclined to go out of my way to support the objectively correct words of a guy I like. But that requires me to open an account on a platform I have carefully (and wisely) avoided for years. Once I do that, how do I justify my failure to open a Bluesky account to fight the good fight there? Sorry, but I think sitting it out it is the least bad choice in. Anything else would feel like adding performative fuel to a meaningless fire in a little world that will safely burn out of its own accord without my attention.
"In fact, the movie’s true ambition is far darker and more satirical: it’s a biting gonzo comedy of manners about how those who claim to live in the realm of ideas betray those ideas when they matter most. Everyone wants it to say something, but its entire point is that, in this milieu, nothing really stands for much")."
It's just witch hunts, all the way down (and yes, that goes for #MeToo as well as the backlash), humans using moral preening and victim status to get ahead.
> "If you are starting to believe that the vast bulk of humanity is a worthless morass of lying, defecating chimpanzees, then I've done my job." -- Citizen Ted
Given that Freddie has seen a lot of the ugly side of life, I'm kind of surprised that he's surprised when people don't act in accordance with their proclaimed high moral principles.
OMG, a dark comedy about my colleagues?! Now this absolutely has to be seen.
"Oleanna" by David Mamet (play and film adaptation) from 1994 covers this topic from within the PC days.
I was thinking about that film while I was reading the essay. Mamet’s deeply uncomfortable film raises an important issue. William H. Macy’s character doesn’t actually cross a sexual line with Rebecca Pigeon, in my opinion, but he is a horrible jerk to her and fails to fulfill his duty as her professor. The only way she can punish him is to invoke sexual harassment.
I think that the same issue applies in some “Me Too” cases. (Note: some cases! Many, many “Me Too” accusations were over real harassment and worse!) Sometimes, a man isn’t sexually harassing a woman he has power over, but he is treating her badly for other reasons. But when “Me Too” is the easiest (or the only) way to punish the behavior, it is tempting to invoke it.
I think we need a new category for bad, abusive behavior that isn’t sexual to account for professors like Macy’s character.
Thank you, interesting reply! I'm a huge Mamet fan, his The Winslow Boy and State & Main are absolutely 2 of my all time favorites.
People behaving badly, particularly those in a position of power or authority, is the human condition; I'm not convinced that there should be any special carve-outs for punishing perpetrators or lionizing victims. I think authors and playwrights and filmmakers actually offer us the best path forward to examine and reconsider our own behaviors and expectations.
Took an acting class back in the mid-nineties where we did a scene from Oleanna. Mamet is a blast for dialog!
Boycotting anything and everything with any woke, #MeToo, leftist, feminist propaganda.
#MeToo promotes the wrong end of feminism and continues to drive a wedge into male-female gender relations. It was never about equality, it was a tool of the vulnerable narcissist female that was always angry at the specific dicks she craved but could not attract.
Did you read the essay?
Yes. Freddie seems to agree that #MeToo has lost its gas, but my point is that it was always toxic and destructive.
You're a partisan culture warrior, and you're boring as shit. *That* was your comment in response to FdB's piece? Get offline for a few years, man. You're like an AI trained on the most boring social media posts ever.
You type while looking in the mirror after beating off to Antifa videos.
Of course you think that. Your brain is cooked.
LOL. My brain is more than fine. Your problem is that you have no valid point of reference. You need to get out of your brainwashing bubble a bit sweetheart. It is not that K. Richardo is ignorant, it is that he knows so much that just isn't so. Cults will do that to a person.
Coming at the cold, you sound exactly like a tedious left wing culture warrior who has one answer for everything, no matter the question, just from the other side.
Lol. So, you want alternative facts?
Inject that projection directly into my veins. Delicious.
Not just fear and timidity, but status competition among elites in a world of elite overproduction, a la al-Gharbi.
Crazy that Andrew Garfield is old enough to play a college professor and not a college student. I guess The Social Network is somehow fifteen years old.
Finally nonsense shows itself to be nonsense and this film documents it 🤨
This is a great review but reminds me of Vissini’s riff on the poisoned cup with the Man in Black in the Princess Bride: “All I have to do is divine from what I know of you (and this movie)….”
Maybe if more people read Sontag’s Against Interpretation, more people would shut up about what things mean and instead appreciate things for what they are.
Michelle Goldberg’s NYT review is exhibit A:
“After the Hunt” fails not because of its premise but because it’s overwrought and self-satisfied.”
There is a meme going around:
"Metalheads and bikers are nice people cosplaying as mean people, while hippies and progressives are mean people cosplaying as nice people."
My family is from the Midwest where I spent my younger child years. I have lived in California since 1974. I first lived in a central valley agricultural community. Since 1978, after I graduated high school, I moved to a liberal college town where I still live. I have been involved with city politics in this liberal community. So, I have quite experience associating with people from both political tribes.
The analogy goes like this. In the Midwest town where my family is from, the new progressive blue haired and tatted lesbian couple that moves in will hear from the working-class couple next door that they don't like their lesbian lifestyle, their hair color, their tattoos and their politics. But when one of them is sick, the husband neighbor will mow their grass and clear the snow from the walkway and driveway, and the wife will bring them soup and ask if there is anything she can do to help them in their time of need. In my liberal community the progressive neighbor next door to the Trump supporter with his F150 parked in his driveway chats about the weather, asks how the kids are doing... and then goes inside to tell her husband "I hope he and his wife dies of cancer or a car accident, and his kids become orphans." And her low-T progressive whimp of a husband nods his head in agreement.
I've seen:
> "The old saw that liberals love humanity but hate humans while conservatives hate humanity but love humans is proven accurate over and over, each time I am in the one or the other's company." -- "Chateau"